


little lamb

by orphan_account



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Gen, hints of miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-23
Packaged: 2018-01-26 04:42:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1675070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The serving girl was one of the types who seem to be everywhere at once. {come away little lamb, come away to the slaughter...}</p>
            </blockquote>





	little lamb

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Day Four of Seven Days of Frary. This one's dark and filled with Frary pain towards the end. You've been warned.

The serving girl is one of the types that seem to be everywhere at once.

She serves the cold soldiers soup from the kitchens, and looks up at exactly the right moment. Prince Francis is leaving the platform where his parents stand and pushing through the crowd; she turns her head and spots Queen Mary rushing to meet him. The two embrace each other like lovers, like they’re dying of thirst and have finally found their oasis, and the serving girl watches it all in silence.

Queen Mary is the one who breaks the kiss. As the serving girl pours soup into a shivering soldier’s small wooden bowl, she watches the Scottish Queen stand on her toes and whisper something to her husband. The serving girl doesn’t know what Queen Mary said to him, but his entire face seems to light up at the news.

She figures it out soon enough. Prince Francis can’t resist looking down at the Queen’s stomach and placing his hands over her belly, as if it carries the most precious thing in the world. _Felicitations, Madame_ , the serving girl thinks, and the necklace underneath her dress weighs hot and bright on her breast. _Felicitations, indeed._

* * *

As the weeks pass, it becomes obvious that Queen Mary carries the future of France inside her womb, solely for the fact that the Queen and Prince Francis cannot keep their hands off her belly. Their gestures are little, but frequent; once while pouring the dinner wine, the serving girl saw Francis massage small circles into Mary’s gently curving belly, and Mary’s answering smile as she rested her own hand atop her husband’s.

She hears her fellow servants whisper about how attentive and adoring the monarchs are to each other, and Francis and Mary’s devotion to each other pleases most of the servants. The serving girl listens to her friends sigh about how they hope to have a husband like the Dauphin, and meets the gaze of another quiet servant, a chambermaid.

The chambermaid mouths a name in silence to the serving girl, easy to see thanks to the Moon’s generous gift of light that night, and the serving girl nods in response. The serving girl rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling, her necklace a warm glow piercing her heart.

* * *

The serving girl is there when the lance splinters into King Henry’s eye, and she watches the blood pool on the ground without any expression. She’d skipped her cleaning duties to watch the festivities, as she so rarely got to go, but today she regrets her decision. As the crowd gathers around King Henry and the chances of discovery shrink, the serving girl quietly leaves the tree she’d climbed and runs to the castle.

When she tells the gathered servants the news, the chambermaid’s face is pale and grim. “So Francis will be King,” she says, and one of the servants smiles.

“Francis will be a good King! If the way he treats Mary is any indication, he will love his subjects as much as he loves her.”

“And his child,” another servant adds, and a snicker travels throughout the room. “He’s quite affectionate, he is.”

“Oi, you leave the Dauphin alone!” a matronly kitchen wench scolds. “Affection means he won’t be a tyrant. He’ll treat us much better than Mad King Henry ever would have, that he will, just you wait.”

“D’you think that he’ll bring Bash back to court?” a maid asks, a dreamy smile on her face.

“I think not!” the matron scoffed. “Get your fancies out of your head, child, you know Bash. He’s loyal as a dog, and he won’t stray from that _noble_ wife of his.”

The chambermaid and the serving girl meet gazes, and they mouth the same name. The matron eventually stops the gossip and shoos them off to their chores. The serving girl turns and leaves the kitchens, heading for one of the noblewomen’s rooms to strip the bedsheets.

While she’s on her way back, bedsheets gathered in her arms, she stops at the mouth of an empty hallway and cranes her neck. Prince Francis is in Queen Mary’s arms, his forehead pressed to hers, eyes closed, and hands on her belly as if it’s the only thing tethering him to the Earth.

Mary holds his face in her hands and presses soft kisses to his cheeks, murmuring words that the serving girl cannot hear. It’s sweet, their devotion to each other, but the serving girl remembers Mary in the words and every time she looks at the Scot she sees her friend’s name instead.

The serving girl re-adjusts her hold on the bedsheets and leaves the two in their quiet, little moment; and for the first time, the necklace underneath her dress is as warm as the rest of her body.

* * *

The chambermaid presses a rose thorn into the serving girl’s hand the next night, and the thorn pierces through her skin and turns red with the blood that drips onto the stone floor. The serving girl pulls out the thorn and tosses it out the window, nodding at the waiting chambermaid. They whisper the name to each other and part ways, and the serving girl’s hand stops bleeding long before she reaches the kitchens.

The head kitchen boy who’d replaced Leith spots her the moment she walks into the kitchens, and it doesn’t take long for him to send his assistants out on errands and thus leaving the two alone.

The serving girl glances at the many pots of soup cooking at the fires as she makes her way to the herb room. “Oi, you can’t go in there,” the kitchen boy calls after her, and the serving girl makes a show of dropping something. She leans down to pick up the invisible item, and her necklace wedges free from underneath her dress and falls down to twirl in the air.

When she stands up, the antlered necklace is prominent on her chest, and the kitchen boy stills. “For Isobel,” the serving girl says.

“For Isobel,” the kitchen boy replies, grief in his eyes. The serving girl pulls back the curtain separating the herbs from the rest of the kitchen and goes in. A little pinch of pennyroyal would be more than enough for her.

* * *

The serving girl is in the dining hall when the soup is served. She lingers by one of the columns as Prince -no, King - Francis is the first one served, then Queen Mary, then the rest of the diners. Francis massages a small circle into Mary’s stomach, and Mary smiles as she mixes the soup with her spoon.

The serving girl watches and walks back to the kitchens as Queen Mary blows the steam off her soup and swallows the first spoonful. She brings out the second batch, with no change in Queen Mary’s demeanor, and as she prepares to leave to the kitchens for a third batch she begins to think that perhaps the kitchen boy had betrayed them.

But Mary is paler than usual, and after the fourth batch she lets out a small gasp that seems to capture the attention of the entire room. The serving girl sets the soup down in front of a diner and steps back into the shadows, to watch and wait.

It is only when Mary stands up, her hands on her stomach and her face twisting in pain, that the serving girl begins to move. Francis is standing up, holding Mary in his arms, and Mary utters a pain-filled cry that makes her ladies run to her.

The serving girl reaches the abandoned kitchens in a few moments. She does not turn back, not even when Mary’s cries turn to sobs of “No! No!” and Francis is shouting for a physician. She leaves the panicking castle for the comfort of the night and the warmth of the Lady Moon on her cheeks.

“For Isobel,” the serving girl hisses to the air, and the antlered necklace on her chest begins to warm anew.


End file.
